10 Bold Predictions for Boxing in 2016
Say goodbye to 2015 and hello to 2016.
The past year has been interesting for the sweet science, but it's time to put the past in the past and take a good, long stare into the crystal ball at what comes next.
Boxing heads into 2016 in a state of flux.
Older stars such as Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao are exiting stage left, while new blood, such as Gennady Golovkin, Canelo Alvarez and Roman Gonzalez, appear set to take the reins.
With that in mind, let's make some predictions about the coming year.
These are 10 (mostly) bold predictions for boxing in the new year!
Pacquiao Will Fight Bradley but Not Call It Quits
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Pacquiao will face Timothy Bradley on April 9 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in what the Filipino icon says will be his final fight, per Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times.
It will also be the third bout between the elite welterweights, with each man winning one (though Bradley's was highly controversial), but it isn't likely to light the fires for boxing fans who were hoping for a fresh face like Terence Crawford, Amir Khan or even Adrien Broner.
That doesn't mean it's not a quality fight (two top-five welterweights and top-10 pound-for-pound fighters) with high stakes, however.
Pacquiao says he's ending his boxing career after this fight to focus on politics in his native Philippines. The 37-year-old already serves in Congress and has stated an interest in running for president as recently as this past year, per Sean Wagner-McGough of CBS Sports.
The Pac-Man has been on the shelf since losing a wide decision to longtime rival Mayweather in boxing's richest prizefight this past May. He subsequently had shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff and has been out ever since.
Per Pugmire, Arum says he won't advertise this as Pacquiao's last fight because his charge could change his mind and he doesn't want to be labeled a "huckster" if he does. That's a good call because, no matter what you hear, this won't be Manny's swan song.
If he loses, which is entirely possible—Bradley looked like a wholly different fighter in dismantling Brandon Rios under the tutelage of Teddy Atlas early in November—it won't be the storybook ending and will necessitate another fight.
And, if he wins, you know there will be much chatter about a rematch of a certain Fight of the Century that shall remain nameless to protect innocent boxing fans. There's already chatter of such.
Andre Ward Will Continue to Frustrate
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This one probably isn't all that bold, since Andre Ward has been frustrating boxing fans since at least 2011. That's bound to continue, even if the harsh words seem to be getting to a fighter who is easily among the pound-for-pound top fighters in the sport (probably No. 1), if he ever chose to fight in the ring rather than in court or social media.
Ward took to his official Twitter feed on December 27 to express his displeasure with some of the criticism he's received in the past couple of years:
"Random Thought: If you are a true fan of boxing you shouldn't bash and disrespect any fighter stepping between those ropes!! That simple."
While it's true that all fighters should be respected (they put their lives on the line with every punch), none is above reproach.
Not one.
Ward is still living off his win in the Super Six tournament that crowned him the undisputed top dog at super middleweight. That's a great accomplishment, coming with (at the time) elite-level wins over Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler and Arthur Abraham.
He followed that up with a knockout over weight-drained light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson, and it seemed his path to stardom was heading down the fast track. But just three fights (three fights) since 2011 have left Ward what RingTV's Michael Woods calls a "curious case."
Ward spent much of the next several years fighting (and losing) legal battles with his promoter, taking time only to stop Edwin Rodriguez and then (almost two years later) the wholly overmatched Paul Smith.
His contract with HBO is slated to lead to a light heavyweight showdown with unified champ Sergey Kovalev late in 2016, but, with Ward having to postpone his last fight with knee swelling, and a guy like the three-loss Marco Antonio Periban being floated as his next foe, we're less than optimistic that happens.
Gennady Golovkin Will Beat Canelo Alvarez
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What more can we say about Gennady Golovkin?
Just thank your lucky stars every night that you're not the next guy up to stand across the ring from the Kazakh bomber, who has knocked out 21 straight foes and unified the WBA and IBF Middleweight Championships while also capturing the WBC's interim title.
That latter piece of hardware entitles GGG to a shot at current full WBC champion Saul "Canelo" Alvarez.
The WBC initially mandated that Golovkin would get an immediate crack at the winner of Canelo's November clash with Miguel Cotto, but it (smartly) backed off and allowed the two sides to negotiate further.
Had the WBC overplayed its hand and stripped Canelo for not making the fight by the deadline, it's likely that would have had a counterproductive effect and made the fight less, not more, likely.
The two sides were able to reach an agreement that will allow each fighter to take an interim bout in the first half of 2016 with the aim of staging what has to be the biggest fight in boxing right now in the fall. Lots of issues still need to be resolved, most notably weight, but it seems the superfight is on track.
At least, for now.
It will happen, and in a tough contest, Golovkin will win to stake his claim as the legitimate middleweight champion (for the most part he already holds that distinction), extending his knockout streak and establishing himself as the best fighter on the planet.
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But Canelo Will Still Be Boxing's Top Draw
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Winning and losing aren't always everything in boxing, and despite what will likely be a loss to Golovkin, Canelo will remain the premier attraction and marketing star of the sport.
Why you ask?
Simple.
This kid has something that is all too often absent in star fighters in this era of boxing: guts.
Canelo talks the talk and walks the walk, every single time. He's a throwback to the fighters of yesteryear, always wanting to win but not being deterred from taking a tough matchup by the possibility of a loss.
Sugar Ray Robinson (no, we're not comparing the two on any level beyond what follows) finished his career with 19 losses (many coming past his best days) and is considered by most to be the greatest pugilist of all time. That's because he fought everyone in his era, multiple times, beating them all but dropping a few along the way.
Canelo's fighting spirit—the desire to not just say he's a boxing star but prove it—will continue to propel him to new heights in 2016 and beyond, even if he, like Robinson, drops one along the way in a great, tough fight.
Wlad Will Reign Again...
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This one might be a bit controversial, given how truly awful Wladimir Klitschko looked in dropping his heavyweight championship with barely any resistance against Tyson Fury in November.
The long-reigning champ looked like a shell of the man who dominated the division for the better part of a decade, successfully defending his title 18 times and tying Joe Louis, one of the boxing's all-time greats, with a record 27 heavyweight title fights.
It's disingenuous to take credit from Fury, as some have done, by simply saying Wlad was past his best—that Father Time, who remains undefeated, had simply caught up with the future Hall of Fame fighter.
Fury fought a smart, if not exciting, tactical fight and neutralized the known advantages of his opponent. He won, Wlad lost, and that's that.
Conventional wisdom in boxing usually says that the winner of a fight wins the rematch more convincingly.
That generally holds true, but it won't in this case.
Wlad has taken a far worse beating in the media and with the fans than what Fury dished out to him in Germany. He will be motivated to reclaim the titles he held for so long and re-establish the parts of his legacy that were tarnished by ending his epic reign with a whimper.
This one is a risky call, but Wlad knocks out Fury in their rematch.
Confidence level?
60-40, at the high end.
But Anthony Joshua Is the Future
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The heavyweight division has a good amount of potentially elite young talent for the first time in a long time.
Deontay Wilder holds the WBC Heavyweight Championship, Tyson Fury the WBA and WBO, and Joseph Parker looks like the real deal out of New Zealand, but none has the look of a transcendent fighter the way Anthony Joshua does.
The towering Brit, who won Olympic gold at the 2012 London Games, looks like one of those heavyweight fighters you only see come around so often. There's a bad tendency to overhype young fighters who have tons of raw talent but need further development before they can reach the upper echelon, but we'll take that risk here.
Joshua will be a heavyweight champion by the end of 2016 and the heavyweight champion in 2017.
The one development that came out of Fury winning the title from Wlad (good for fighters, bad for fans) is that the unified title, long held together by Klitschko's willingness to complete his mandatory obligations, remained intact.
Fury has already been stripped by the IBF, and the WBA hands out belts like a store that is liquidating overstock after the holidays, so the chances for more fighters to snag belts will increase in the new year.
Joshua will grab some championship gold before taking the real crown not too long after we write this piece next year.
He's the real deal and the best heavyweight to come around in many, many years.
PBC Will Continue to Be a Mixed Bag
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Premier Boxing Champions is not as great as the fanboys say or as bad as the critics would have you believe. The truth, as it often does, lies straight in the middle, where it will remain in the year to come.
A lot of people expected a lot from PBC in its inaugural year, as it was loaded with millions of dollars in investor cash and a ton of talent at or near the top level. Nevertheless, Al Haymon generated expectations that would have been difficult to match, even if every broadcast featured high-level fights.
In a tad bit of irony, it's PBC's second-tier cards (on networks like Spike and Fox Sports 1 rather than major networks CBS, NBC) that have produced the best action and most memorable fights.
Where PBC has failed, utterly in some cases, is in matching its better-known talent against compelling and (sometimes) even competitive opposition. We've gotten Danny Garcia vs. Lamont Peterson (it turned out not to be a good fight, but it was a significant matchup) but also Adonis Stevenson vs. Tommy Karpency.
We've gotten Keith Thurman vs. Robert Guerrero and Shawn Porter vs. Adrien Broner but also Peter Quillin vs. Michael Zerafa and Jermall Charlo vs. Wilky Campfort. You can't fault PBC when good matchups on paper turn into bad fights in the ring, but you can it when bad matchups on paper turn into gross, dangerous mismatches in the ring.
PBC's first significant network fight card of 2016 takes place on January 23 on Fox.
Danny Garcia takes on Robert Guerrero in the main event—seemingly a calculated-risk fight for Garcia against a past-his-best Ghost—and it's co-headlined by a potential barnburner between Sammy Vasquez and Aron Martinez.
Dominic Breazeale also takes on Amir Mansour in an intriguing heavyweight clash.
That's a quality start (even if you believe, like we do, that it's managed risk), but it needs to remain consistent. PBC does a decent job of matchmaking, given the large number of cards, but it needs to remain consistent to avoid further criticism.
Miguel Cotto Will Fight Once More Then Call It
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Cotto dropped a decision (which was closer than the official judges cards but still clearly a loss) to Canelo in November, and the Puerto Rican star has just one fight remaining on his three-fight deal with Roc Nation Sports.
He'll honor that contract with one more fight at 154 pounds and then retire with his faculties and financial security intact.
The future Hall of Famer knocked out weight-drained former titlist in Daniel Geale in June before struggling offensively against his younger challenger and losing his middleweight championship.
A rematch with Canelo would have been a possibility, but with the cinnamon-haired Mexican in need of an interim bout before steaming toward Golovkin, Cotto provides too much risk. And it's not like there's anything left to prove in a rematch of a fight that most feel wasn't close.
Cotto, as he was apt to tell you himself, was never a true middleweight. He took the middleweight crown in impressive fashion from Sergio Martinez, but both of his defenses came at contracted catchweights well below the divisional limit of 160 pounds.
He'll head back down to 154 where he's comfortable, take one more fight and then take his ball and go home, which is the right call.
Gonzalez-Estrada II Will Be Fight of the Year
9 of 10Roman Gonzalez ends 2015 as boxing's pound-for-pound king and with exciting fights in and around his weight class.
HBO bought into Chocolatito when it showcased him on the network in May as the co-featured bout on the Golovkin vs. Marco Antonio Rubio clash from the StubHub Center in Carson, California. He paid them back with a complete demolition of former champ Edgar Sosa that left fans demanding more.
Gonzalez picked right up where he left off with a higher-profile appearance as the main pay-per-view support bout for GGG vs. David Lemieux, thrashing multi-weight champion (and one of the best American lower-weight fighters ever) Brian Viloria.
Those wins helped turn many people who had never seen the Nicaraguan fight into believers.
Many of those who had already bought into Gonzalez did so because of his epic shootout with Juan Francisco Estrada that netted him a light flyweight title in 2012. That's a fight that many would love to see again, and it has been recently floated as a possibility in the new year.
It will happen.
Mark it down.
And, when it does, it will be the 2016 Fight of the Year.
Terence Crawford Will Be a Star Stuck in Neutral
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Terence Crawford might still have a shot at landing a Pacquiao fight (if the Filipino elects to press on after fighting Bradley), though that's out for the time being, which leaves him without a ton of great options to prove he has the potential to be not just a star but a superstar pound-for-pound entrant.
He could fight Viktor Postol in an intriguing unification bout at 140 pounds, but it seems like the welterweight division beckons the Omaha, Nebraska, native in the not-too-distant future.
Unfortunately, the business realities of boxing being what they are, most of the other top-tier welterweights fight across the street on Showtime and under Haymon's banner.
Amir Khan, Keith Thurman, Porter, Garcia and Errol Spence Jr., among others, are off the table, at least for the time being. Unless Arum and Haymon can find a way to coexist, which seems about as likely as yours truly being named king of the world in the next three minutes.
Kell Brook could be a possibility, but that will require some tough negotiating.
Bradley and Crawford are "good buddies" and will not fight each other, per Rafael.
That doesn't leave a ton in the way of good fights for a potential superstar, which means he'll largely stay in neutral, even if still winning, in 2016.
Jessie Vargas is available; so is Ruslan Provodnikov. Mauricio Herrera, a tricky match for anyone, appears to be lined up next, per Pugmire.
Those are good fights but not superstar fights, and that just sucks.
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